Network Nations Ep:5 What Makes a Nation? Identity, Belonging & Digital Communities

Transcript

Two weeks ago, 160,000 Nepalese people elected a new prime minister using a Discord server. So the [music] same the same software all these groups generally are using was used to elect a prime minister and to hold a democratic election. There is this danger that this creates identityism that this creates tribalism at a new scale. U undoubtedly that will happen. >> Network nations or whatever we call it is something very different. um where the decision-m mechanism is within the group itself. But I'm still not completely convinced that uh what you describe is something else than digital communities or a transnational deterteralized form of civil society

based on digital technologies. I think internet [music] power is uh is pretty hard to put in a bottle and definitely is not just positive outcomes. There's there's no utopia here. Uh but I think there is a new type of society perhaps. >> Welcome back to the network nations miniseries on the green pill podcast. I'm Primov Philippi and together with Philix beer I will be your co-host in the coming episodes. Today we are witnessing across the world new kinds of civic communities which are beginning to take shape. community that use the centralized technologies to govern themselves, to steward shared resources, but also to act together collectively across borders. And this is what we call

network nations. And so in this series, we explore network nation as a new design space for civil society in the network age. Our goal is to chart an alternative path to the network state, one where technology is at the service of civil society and not the other way around. And so instead of reproducing today's power imbalances in the network age, we're asking a few question. What if network societies were built from the bottom up as shared commons rather from the top down as a startup venture? And what if they treated member as co-creator rather than as customers?

What if they practiced cooperation and mutual care rather than competition and extraction? And what if they cultivated sovereignty as a collective good for the many rather than as a private asset only owned by a few? And so in each episode we will bring together thinkers, builders and organizers, practitioners who are exploring this new frontier of community self-governance, helping us imagine how civil society can reclaim political agency in the network age. And if you want to dive deeper, please go and visit our website networknations.network

network where you will find our manifesto and many other ways to connect with our growing community of practice. Today we are discussing the concept of network nationhood exploring how digital technologies are enabling new forms of collective identity and a sense of belonging that transcend traditional geographical borders. Because we often associate a nation with a particular territory or a flag or a governmental structure. But nations are essentially communities of people which is bound by collective identity and a shared sense of future or prosperity. And many diasporas like the Jews, the KS or the Armenian people have shown that it is

possible to maintain a strong sense of belonging and collective identity despite not being in the same geographical space. And so with the advance of digital communication networks, many people around the world can now cultivate the same sense of collective identity and belonging at a whole new scale. So today we're joined by three distinguished guests who bring their own perspective on nationhood, belonging, and those new political communities. Lev Argad is a legal scholar at the European University Institute who explores how digital technology are reshaping citizenship in the digital age and his landmark research on cloud communities has

investigated already for many years the legal implications of political community that are digitally connected. Rhina Babbok is a leading political theorist on citizenship and migration also at the European University Institute and his work on transnational democracy investigate how political communities can exist across borders. Finally, Yans Strickler is a writer and entrepreneur who has been exploring new models of collective organization through initiatives like Kickstarter who is his co-founder and Metal. And so together we will explore how n network nation are decoupling nationhood from territory and are creating new spaces

for political agency and collective actions that span across territories. And we investigate in particular how people can develop deep roots and a sense of belonging but participating in global communities that are not territorially bound. So yeah, thank you for coming um and joining us in this conversation. Uh so today what we want to explore is uh um a strong hypothesis that have kind of like informed all the work towards uh network nation that we have uh which is basically that we've been observing uh the emergence of uh new

translocal transnational um communities that are not bounded by geographical um boundaries but rather that transcend across multip multiple territories. And basically what we're noticing is that uh because of the the digital proximity as opposed to territorial proximity, we're seeing emerge something that goes beyond a traditional affinity group, but that really start having a particular element of uh cultural identity and a sense of belonging and potentially like some degree of kinship that develop beyond just the fact that we all care about a

particular topic. And um and and this kind of has triggered us this this questioning about like culture and like what actually makes up a nation until until before the network technologies have been always anchored into a proximity that is very territorial. Repeated interaction that come from like uh you know hanging out with people in the same in the same territory. And now that there is this uh repeated interaction that are done on on the digital space and now that actually we are creating new forms of spaces that are non that are new territories that are not geographical but still allow for this type of proximity and therefore

potentially a new culture to emerge out of those communities. Basically this this is this observation that has kind of like triggered this world questioning about well if there is those new communities which are translocal meaning that they exist at multiple place locally but they are connected and interconnected so that they become beyond the local without without reducing without losing the specificity of the local so that that's where h localist distinguish from globalist But basically what we are noticing is that networks become somehow a substrate for these social fabric that is no

longer the geographical territory. And of course this community can be can be still physical even though they are interconnected with other physical community or they can be mainly digital or cloud-based. uh but it is this kind of like the network interdependencies between those community that makes them transllocer. So this is kind of like our basic uh observation and uh I would say it is a strong hypothesis and what we would like to discuss um with the three of you is basically first of all the extent to which you you agree with this hypothesis. you have also been witnessing similar dynamics and uh

whether you believe that this is something this is not just like a coincidence or it's not just some some some marginal thing but we have seen kind of the emergence of something that of course over times it takes long time to get a culture and a cultural identity. So we are we are seeing the first glimmers of something that could become indeed closer to what we what we recognize today in terms of those imagined communities that are nations but in a in a different uh flavor as such. Um so yeah maybe if you can like all of you the three of you if you can comment on on this hypothesis um maybe I can give the name to uh maybe

Her you can start >> okay you want to start with the skeptic uh which is which is good yeah I've read your your great paper on network nations and I find this fascinating stuff it's really food for thought but I'm still not completely convinced that uh what you describe is something else than digital communities or a transnational deterralized form of civil society based on digital technologies.

And one of the reasons is that I think that civil society as we know it within the context of nation states is full of all different kinds of associations. Some of them are fairly loose but some of them are very dense and they do have very strong mechanisms of internal uh governance. Uh the decisive thing that characterizes civil society associations is they are self- selected. You know their members are seen to select themselves into these associations and then sometimes they submit to very harsh regimes of uh you know they give themselves rule. They want to govern themselves. Uh but uh

they are not like political communities. For me there is a very important difference between civil society association and political community and that is that political community is essentially coercive. It is not self- selected. You become a member of a political community essentially by birth. You don't choose it. And that is surprisingly the virtue of political community because polit people are kind of bundled up together without choosing to be so. And then uh the task of democratic politics is to find solutions for collective action problems in these diverse populations that have not chosen

themselves as members of an affinity group or of an association. So the big question is that worked so far on the basis of territory. You have affinity groups, identity groups, civil society associations inside the territory and they are just like you described for network nations multipositional. You can be a member of many different associations of different kinds at the same time. So this is all very similar. But uh the political community was so far based solely on territory and political power exercised over everybody within the territory right and that I don't see yet uh in in network nations

you know they are they are still self- selected essentially I think this is their basic characteristic I think this is an interesting development it is also welcome because if they operate transnationally they may be able to address the transnational structures of power that are exercised over states or over people that states can no longer control like multinational digital corporations for example. So it's a very important tool of democracy to develop these uh associations and communities but I'm not completely convinced that they are anything like political communities in the sense that we think about politics uh as a basically a form

of coercion that individuals are are subjected to to quote Rouso you know uh you can only become free you know out of being subjected and then forming a collective will among those people who have been subjected to to the power. But I I stop here. I have much more to say, but I'm sure we'll have lots of interesting disagreements on this. >> Okay. Yes. >> I uh I I want to react to Reer's very important topics and perhaps to remind u back in 2017, Reer and I uh edited a debate symposium at the European University Institute under similar the concept was similar. The content was

similar but we called it differently cloud communities and it was a fascinating debate. Prem you participated as well and I remember that rer's back then main point of critiques was indeed uh the the confusion of anything like uh whatever we call it network nations and so forth or cloud communities with civil societies. So I want to agree and disagree with RER in the sense that indeed um there are lots of similarities between um network nations and civil societies. They are both voluntary. They are both political in nature or sometimes political in nature. Uh they are both civil in the sense that of non-governmental and uh and also they are usually also

not for profit. Um but there are also differences. I think the global civil society the main difference is governance and the global civil society is not composed of sovereign political entities where there is a decision-making mechanism uh based on let's say one person one vote on equality so global civil society are not acting as as a collective or a sovereign they are more acting on behalf of a group I give you an example take something like uh I don't know organization to promote refugees right whether it's UNHCR or some other organizations uh they are supposed to represent a group and uh and bring the so-called brook group view into the

political organization when decision- making is made. Um network nations or whatever we call it is something very different um where the decision-m mechanism is within the group itself. So it's kind of a decentralized platform to uh uh for for people to govern themselves which is a bit different than civil society. But just kind of to to go back to your own uh first question primma vera I think the question is not only whether we are witnessing something like that I take kind of view to say that yes we are witnessing but it's something different but the question is also whether we should and here not not should witness that but should should try to conceptualize something else and here I want to say that um we urgently

should and I want to tell also r that the way I see it is very much to connect it with the current crisis in liberal democracy or in government crisis because when you look on the data on why liberal democracy is in retreat or is kind of collapsing in some countries uh there are many reason but the reason number one most of the survey I know is failures of governance and so if we ask ourself today um if we design an ideal system of governance given the technological possibilities we have today I don't think that it would anyone of us or anyone would design something that look like the system of governments we live on and out of this political chaos there are many initiative outside

there I don't know liquid democracy and some citizens assembly and some other things and the way I see this network nation concept is something which is very much connected to the problem of trust and to the lack of or the decreased legitimacy in the current government's structure and try to adjust into a new digital era where government structure shouldn't be and indeed is not necessarily connected with territory. >> I I agree with both of you. Uh you know I would say that I just start from a a basic perspective of most human behavior moving online and uh you know used to be

bowling alleys were the most important social place in America. Bowling alleys that no one liked bowling. It was just where everyone else went. And so the internet has become the social space. And what's different about the internet is it allows us to re-imagine and redefine who we are. We can re-individualize every time we create a new account, every time we log on. It's this open expanse of the self and who else is out there. And the world is being remodeled and reconfigured according to internet values. uh it's happening commercially, it's happening socially, politically, it's really accelerating right now. And I think ultimately institutionally that will happen at some point. And maybe where I

see uh maybe a difference of how I think about these things versus some of the framing um is if I if I look at these uh internet based communities which I've been a part of for 25 years and I look at some of the newer spaces I'm in now where it's people you know planning things in private dark dark forest spaces and then launching them and public clear net channels making money doing things together having like private conspiracy public action, conspiracy being a nice work, not not necessarily a bad word, but uh just people talking to each other in these shared spaces. You know, there's a there's a real maturation of of what's happening and what people are capable of. But I I don't think that the

direction it's headed is to be nations. I actually think like nation is a strange word for me. I do think their desire for them to become states and to me a state I don't know I can't speak to the precise difference of a state and a nation or whether there is a precise difference but if I look at what's happening say in crypto like people are trying to instantiate the right to say set laws set rules yes they wouldn't be coercive because there isn't a single place where everyone lives but they are seeking the right to do that on their own and and ultimately the path I see this leading towards is something like a private state which I think is a it is not a monotheistic experience for the

individual in the world. It's not like we only belong to one thing. I think it's a more polyamorous or polytheistic governmental state sort of existence. But so much of the energy of the internet feels that way. And the ability for the internet internet based communities to continue to self-legitimize and you know build up scale up their work in bigger tools I I don't think is going to stop. Um I I kind of assume that what the corporation was to the 20th century like the social structure through which a lot of culture in the world was sort of pushed and changed that's going to be a small internetbased community. That's a dark forest in the 21st century. A group of people in a group chat will be able to

have enormously outsiz influence. And some of those, as we've already seen, are going to feel this desire for greater capacity recognition. They're going to push the boundaries of what can we and can we not be. Uh, and I think they're going to find areas that are pretty successful for them and that are going to lead in a lot of directions that I don't think are uniformly good by by any stretch. But that's what I see from from my seat. >> Okay. So first maybe one disclaimer um which is network nation is a very particular area that we are conceptualizing and observing uh which is clearly not talking of like the

majority of what we see on the internet. I think that there is some and I would like to let's dig into that at some point like I think there is some dark forests uh of the internet that could that do have the properties of network connection of what we call network and other not at all right so I think to to us what we like so when I say like we've been observing things we also been observing many other things uh we've been observing the complete corporatization of the internet etc. So there is a lot of things happening. This network is creating an a very beautiful emergence of like many many different things that did not were were not as

strong before. And we're really focusing on those particular things, those particular communities that are emerging and that seem to exhibit some features. And those features are features that are also featured to different extents of course by by nations. And and those features are essentially um a sense of common cultural identity, a sense of solidarity for people of the same group even though you don't have a direct relationship with a sense of belonging to something to like to this collective entity. that

that is that is the nation and and of course there is a lot of things that the nation has and those those community do not have. But but in terms of um I I I wanted to like connect maybe like what uh the three of you uh have answered which is like it sounds to me uh that Rainer you're saying that those those online community are not qualifying as political community because they have selected they have self selected to be part of a group whereas I think if I hear uh What Leav or Yansi says like in fact those groups are political groups if they choose to act as a political

group and if they choose to develop their own governance and collective action capacity in order to promote specific vested interest or in order to like foster themsel. So I'm I'm curious like I think there is clearly uh visible political and economic power that is visible within those specific uh online communities. Why would they not qualify as political community if they have a political impact? Like what what is it that in your view require this kind of like nonself selecting community in order to qualify as political? If I can uh try to answer this, I think there's

actually no contradiction. It's possible to have to have groups that are self- selected communities and that have very strong ambitions of self-government for their members. Uh think of uh religious or communist utopias of the past, right? that really wanted to disconnect themselves from the nation building that was going on at the same time and realize different kinds of societies. Uh well, you know, the story is uh they didn't actually win the game. The nation states won the game. And uh that's also one question that came up when I read through this. Wouldn't you have a social scientist have to study also the size of

the phenomenon? How big is this? Reading through the network nations uh draft, it occurred to me that the spirit of this seems to me very much still the early years of the internet which where the idea was it's egalitarian, it's open, it's actually an alternative to the crossed structures of the nation states and their territories that we know. There is a real possibility there's a political utopia buried in in the internet. This is what the network nations seem to me to try to keep alive.

But the question is does it scale up? You describe yourself you know how corporations and states have instrumentalized the internet. They have captured it to a large extent and uh not completely because these spaces these alternative spaces still exist. But the question is do you see still the utopian potential in this? Do you think that the the small number of people participating in this and seeing this as uh one of their primary identities that they belong to one of these network nations, wouldn't that be different from the ambitions of nation builders which was always to capture populations rather than small groups you know and and to provide a new structure for the world

which is the nation state and it's the international system that emerged from it. Uh is that utopia still kind of credible or isn't that the danger that you build up a beautiful uh network nation and then eventually if it's successful it will be captured either by a state or by a big corporation and it will be commercialized or it will become a more one of the tools of state surveillance and and and repression that we see all over the internet. So I'm I'm just playing this the skeptic here. I'm by nature I'm an optimist. I want to see the light. I want to see the potential there. But I I still don't see it exactly in that idea of network nations.

>> What's interesting is that these are states that are like uh it's like a a young state with a growth mindset. You know, they're what they're trying to massively advertise people to join their state. It's like a not defined by a fixed border, but defined by uh who or what you can attract there and what sort of meaning may happen. You know, it's a yeah, I think it's a a perhaps a start of a different type that um I don't know if I worry about them being overcome by commercial or state actors so much as I think that there's a internet culture is going to produce its own type of different sort of desirable or less desirable actors and dynamics. I mean, I think internet power is uh is

pretty hard to put in a bottle. Uh and definitely is not just positive outcomes. There's there's no utopia here. Uh but I think there is a new type of society perhaps. Yeah, I think that um the the um the observation that we have and of course we've been observing the internet for many years now and I think we have had the privilege of seeing the early days of the internet which uh indeed was full of this kind of likeworked community that felt that things will change because we getworked and then we can like organize the central in a distributed manner etc. I I would say that like the network nation I think the

fact that the internet has become commercialized would should not uh remove from the fact that the internet is the internet and maybe it's beyond the internet is the fact that we are moreworked in general right is actually and I think this is the core point right is like the fact that sometimes and and I guess it depends which community uh we are each part of. But sometimes you encounter people that are not at all from the same geographical space but because they have been hanging out in the same digital

territories because there has been actually this culture that has emerged. It's not it's not just like an online community where we care about the hobby of like whatever, right? It's not just like oh we like to do open source software is that there is an actual culture around open source which goes beyond the communal interest in openness. It's actually because we spend so much time on those farum on those communities talking to each other on like on a daily basis more so than we actually spend time with our neighbors on a daily basis. All of a sudden that culture is actually becoming something and of course it's very early because because the internet is young. Uh so it

takes it takes ages to actually create like a a strong cultural identity and yet we are witnessing this and and it's not it's obviously not something that you see on the social media on Twitter or or Facebook because those are not actual spaces that enable this type of cultural embedness to emerge. But but there are those fears and and I think Yans you will call them those dark forest. Those are those areas on the internet that have a very strong cultural uh identity and people actually recognize themsel as being part of that group not because we care about the same thing but because we are part of the

same culture. This is something that if it gets corporate corporatized ends up like Facebook which obviously is just trying to monetize social the social graph but that that doesn't that doesn't tap into this culture element that we're actually trying to to extrapolate. I I want to step in on on and try to because I think we talk about different question but just on a side note um the way I see it is that one of the one of the function one of the goals of uh network nations is actually precisely to get rid of this commercial commercialization of the internet and empower the people. Uh but back to the question the way I I kind of I feel that we talk about three

different issues. Uh one is whether and you start with this question Kava whether we we are witnessing the emergence of a new government system whatever we call them. Uh and so this is more like an empirical observation is it existing or not. The second is how to call it how to do the typology of what is it exactly is a nation is a state and so on. And the third is more this is more conceptual question and the third is more normative question is is it good or not? Should we encourage it or not? Is it something that we should welcome or or try to uh minimize? Um on the first question on on whether it exists or not, I agree with RER that it's still at a very early stage. So obviously there are no this new form of government. They are evolving both

because there are new technological possibilities but also and I go back to this point because I think it's essential because of the crisis of the of our old institution of our contemporary government systems. So when there is a crisis and lack of legitimacy and lack of trust in the in the current institution and people have new technological possibilities they look for new government system. Now how to call it here I think that there is a problem because we try to put label of the old world structure of the old war terminology that we have nation state political communities into something which is might be different. I uh Jansi say is more like a state. I I think that the problem with the state is that the

state at least legally um is by definition a territorial unit. This is at least international law definition. Of course the definition is declarative. So it doesn't mean that we can't change the definition and with new possibilities we can revise our definition and and and and so forth. But the way we understand state currently under international law and politics is it's it's a territorial unit. Now with nation um it's also problematic for different reason because of course you have the French concept of nation with a kind of a community of individual with certain right and duties based on equalities but you also have kind of the more traditional German notion of nation which requires also identity and culture and some ethnic origin and so on. So none of those concept for me is

perfectly fit to the new phenomenon that is we are witnessing. Uh it's a it's it's a nice attempt of of of each of us to kind of put a label and to call it inter but clearly there is something new here whether we call it a nation or a state or political community or an upgrade version of a decentralized civil society. Um and then the last question of course whether it's good or not and I would keep this question maybe to a few to a later discussion. >> Yeah. So um I want to I want to jump back on this because I think this is the core of this the questioning that we have right is like when you say it's something new what's new and what's not new right I will answer the what's what I think is

not new and then you can answer what's new what I think is not new is actually it seems to me that the the the reason we choose the name nation is because it's it's extremely salient in describing what we observe. Avento nation has a lot of connotation around the national state. But if we really just look at the nation is basically individuals that feel that they belong to a same cultural identity and that have an interest in fostering that group of people because they are part of that whole. And the the survival of the

community is also part of their own survival because we recognize all as being part of the whole. And this is something that as you say like I guess originally this this type of sentiment towards others is really hard to achieve anywhere else. But on a territorial basis because of proximity repeated interaction because we share by definition we share a common future because if there is like some tragedy in our territory we are all victim of that and so we want to make sure that our territory is safe and etc. And so that leads to creating a state for governing the nation. But if we separate the

institutional scaffolding from the actual group of people, the group of people is just people that not even have a territory and yet have a very strong sense of belonging of kinship and of solidarity uh which motivate them from because you want to foster. So it's like what what we're distinguishing within the network nationals is between like when you have like communities that have an intrinsic purpose where the actual purpose is the community in and of itself. You want to make sure that the community is doing well and is being is thriving versus community with an external purpose which is perhaps like a community of like environmental

activist. In this case, the community is a means to an end and the end is we need to save the planet and therefore let's grab people together to save the planet versus a community like a nation where the intrinsic purpose is we want the the community to exist to prosper and to continue to survive and therefore collective action is the means to the end where the end is the community itself and I think this is at least to us an important distinction between what is a traditional online internet community which usually is an affinity group where people coales because they

have a collective uh external purpose versus those particular community which are special because they have developed such a sense of cultural identity that the that the end is the community rather than the objective that the community might have in common. >> I think though we are getting closer to some kind of agreement. I think what's what's really what's uh you've just uh talked about what's not entirely new about this idea and that's the idea that people uh often have a strong uh desire to share uh community with others

whom they believe to have similar identities. not just ideas, not just political goals, but uh they think they belong together because of a shared identity. Uh now as if you leave aside the idea that uh they also want to exercise political power over themselves then that phenomenon is a very old one and it used to be called ethnicity. This is what ethnic identity is about. It's basically you imagine that you belong uh together with other people whom you don't also know personally because of a shared uh identity that very often is rooted in descent but essentially is rooted in the shared culture. Right? Now um if you add to

this then the the further idea that is essential for nationhood and that distinguishes ethnicity from nationhood uh that there is a desire to exercise collective self-government within that group. That's again something that you emphasize that you think these people want not just to be together hang out in the internet with people that are like themselves but they want to give themselves rule rules you know there could be even taxation you know rules of behavior who belong how to exclude how to include people there could be a whole system of governance that emerges in such uh online uh based uh communities I think all that is possible and you study

it and I I believe you that it does exist. I'm still slightly skeptical about the potential uh for upscaling this. But the really new thing about this is the non-territoriality. It's that you can have proximity used to be premised on physical proximity and therefore the idea was only in a territory can you govern yourselves collectively. You need the physically pro proximity to have this merger between the idea of a shared collective identity and collective self-government.

Now what you are suggesting is we have a different type of proximity. We have the possibility to be very proximate even maybe more proximate than with your physical neighbors in digital spaces. Right? And therefore there is a potential for something like uh affinity or identity based political communities to emerge there. I still think you know when I look at the real world where do we observe the use of these instruments for example in diaspora communities very often it's still hooked to a state and its territory and the political conflicts that go on there and then this is used to expand the reach of the national

state-based community uh beyond territorial limits to a global scale. So you have global nations uh that are basically diaspora nations uh that still have a territory that they see as their homeland and that's crucial for their for their identity and they have shared ideas what should become politically with that homeland but they use the instrument of the internet uh to uh to realize this political ambition. The idea that you would drop also the homeland, the territory out of that equation and that you would just create political communities that are like nation states but without the state and without the territory is still I think

rather fanciful. It's it's utopian in in my sense. I'm not entirely sure and that was Leaf's last question. Well, now we we're still talking about uh how to describe the phenomenon, you know, uh not whether we think it's positive, but if you think what is positive about this, I'm my worry is if this were possible to scale up to uh so that most of humanity belongs to one or the other or maybe several of these network nations, then I think because of the self- selection mechanism, what we would find is these network nations become internally even more homogeneous than nation states were ever uh did ever become through

pressures of cultural assimilation in nation states and they become become externally ever more heterogeneous ever more different from each other and therefore I think the potential of conflict and trouble in a world made up of self- selected network nations is probably even higher than it is in a world of territorial nation states that that's my dystopian interpretation >> and I have a super mic for immediate answer to that and then and then Le you can do I think I I would agree with you if and only if the understanding of network nation is that you belong to one network nation and nothing else whereas one is like network nation are

overlapping layers of sovereignty meaning that first of all you're always anyhow part of your own territorial nation states if you if you have one and then you can join you can join you you you recognize yourself as being part of additional communities some of which might have a network nation uh approach. I I would say that yes. Yes. And of course the network notion creates this cultural attraction because it is the people that have been in proximity proximity with each other in this network means that will that will continue to coales around but also there's something really powerful about

it because of the trans locality which is all of me which is a French citizen and you know someone else that is like from the US and someone else that is from Australia and from the Middle East and so forth. Uh if we are part of the same network nation, then we also are somehow coaling across those territories and potentially actually mediating specific conversations and specific political struggles that are more difficult to address when you're only focusing through territorially based political entities. And so this is this this transllocality

might enable people that will never speak to each other because they are in a very far away landscape to actually create this kind of affinities and belonging because they are part of another type of nation which is digital nation or whatever it's going to be. So I think it has both the danger of like you know the filter bubble and uh polarization if we like but also it can reduce the other type of polarization or or bounded territorialness uh that makes it difficult to converse because of because we have different territorial interest. Um so first of all it's a very important note vera I I um um it's certainly a person can can be a

member in different network nation and it's obviously not uh at least the way I see it is not a replacement or aim to replace the nation state but kind of a complimentary uh element what's uh what are the differences and what are the very kind of unique novel aspect of it I want to say something on it I completely agree with RER that um the idea of a non territorial uh belonging and source of identity is not new. Huh? So this is about ethnicity. This is a good example rer also religion. Huh? So uh the religion is uh uh without a specific territory and so on. Uh so this is not new. I also think that the form of governments when you become not just a group of people to

hang out for belonging and and and and identity and so on but to govern your life is not know in the sense that for instance religion is also like that uh religion is also a system of governance uh even though at the end it's kind of coming from from the cloud h from from God or from the the pope who is there but what I think is extremely unique here and this is the the point from um that I want to emphasize um in my way to try to convince Rhina um is that this is a way if for instance if Bitcoin is a way of new way to distribute money and and wealth in in perhaps in in in not the best in also implementation but here

is a way a different way to distribute to circulate political power and here I think this is a very important and unique feature because you take an um you take [clears throat] groups that never have spoken in a and and being able to govern their life directly and you bypass the the traditional institution of the enlightenment of representative democracy. So just to give you an example to make it more concrete um take the concept of the Jewish people. Uh you spoke about diaspora. There is nothing like that. It's an abstract notion.

There is no uh maybe the Jewish agency but there is no um office or entity where you can ask the Jewish people what's the opinion about ABC and ask them to govern the life and have a Jewish uh court for uh whatever Jewish dispute and so on. This is a way where you can group together certain and and make more concrete certain concept and let the people within this group to govern their life and to distribute political power in a different way and this is the I think the the unique feature that you don't have in global civil society or or certainly not in representative democracy which still govern life in a very post-industrial revolution way in

in rather than using possibilities, technological possibility that we have now in order to allow the people to express themselves and I put in the sign now because I want to give to Jansy the question whether it's good or bad. I think it's good but maybe uh this will be uh the last point. Yansy >> I really agree that you know people are people have organically created these things. Uh this has not been a top- down implementation of try try to organize in these ways. These are these are people trying to speak to their own social problems, their own gaps. Like it's just been a I think a fairly organic process.

There's a line from a a group called K-hole from 2014 that says, "Once upon a time, people were born into communities and had to find their individuality. Today, people are individuals and have to find their communities." And so the internet is where that's happening. And we're seeing that there isn't a ceiling to where that scales up. I mean this is a within a nation but two weeks ago 160,000 Nepalese people uh elected a new prime minister using a discord server. So the same the same software all these groups generally are using was used to elect a prime minister and to hold a democratic election. Um so there is this danger that this creates identityism

that this creates tribalism at a new scale. Uh undoubtedly that will happen. Uh maybe tribalism is a greater truth than the nation states that we've had in the past hundred years because there is an alienation that is broadly felt. We I think we fail to appreciate many of the benefits but all the the drawbacks are very obvious to see and this is a I think this is a transitionary period and what states we belong to are are it's a stack uh they will have different levels of importance. If we even think about the way we've moved from our mailing address being the most important thing to now like an email address is the most important thing in another context. We have notions of different places where

we really live and reside and that's just going to that's just going to keep happening you know especially for anyone born you know under the age of 30 they have only known the life of the internet and and that that is just going to continue to compound on itself I think. So I I don't I I will say ultimately I think this is positive because I think this enables more human agency. I think this enables more human flourishing. I think it will also enable more pain, more conflict, more all kinds of things. Uh but I think it is ultimately a greater unshackling of the human spirit.

Uh you know an imagination of what could be. Um and I I'm I'm certainly interested to see where it goes. >> Amazing. Yeah. Uh thank you. We don't have the answer yet, right? But uh it's definitely something interesting to explore and um and to to be fair to all the conversation we had in the past like we we continue to call it network nation and we know that nation is not the perfect name for it but it it maintains still we haven't found something better.

So if you of course if you have a better suggestion we might we might be very keen to to revise the name. We are closing now but uh before the closing maybe if you if you can each say uh one word on like where can people follow you uh follow your work and uh get information about uh um yeah how how to reach out to you if you want. uh very easy. Google me on the internet, you will find my name, my email address. I'm not hidden, but I'm not um I have to say I'm rather old-fashioned and try to protect myself in my time. I'm not involved in any uh big way in uh social media or other internet groups.

>> Yes, sure. I have a center for constitutional crisis can be found online as well. and uh I have a project uh together with you and some others on network nations. Uh we would be delighted to get uh people's perspective especially on the concept and how to conceptualize uh what we are witnessing now. my website ystrickler.com you can find things I've written uh and most of my energy these days goes into a project called metal label which is building group core software legislation economic tools to make cooperation uh as easy as competition um so yeah find me there >> amazing great thank you all thank you so